Lucinda Lovelace
Lucinda Lovelace is one of the main characters of Tales of Concordia. She is the head scientist for the Magistrate family of Pacis. Backstory Lucinda was born 16 years ago on February 24th in Gilt Edge, West Concordia. Her parents are famed Norman inventor Lawrence Lovelace and his wife Barbara “Barbie” Lovelace. As a scientist who was known for studying obscure fields of research to create groundbreaking inventions, Lawrence was deftly curious about the Magus culture and magic itself. So shortly after Lucinda’s birth, the family moved to Pacis, East Concordia. Daddy Daughter Bonding As a child, Lucinda had a close relationship with her father. She admired him for his talent as an inventor and would often watch him while he worked in his home office. When she was 4, she begged him to let her invent something just like him. In an attempt to humor her he gave her a box of drone parts to play with. A few hours later, he checked on her to find that she successfully put the drone together and even upgraded it. Thrilled at the revelation that his daughter was also a natural born genius, he showed her a history book detailing the legacy of the Lovelace family. Descendants born from their bloodline were known for having high levels of intellect and ambitious personalities that allowed them to accomplish great feats. Famous scholars, philosophers, pioneers, scientists and even Renaissance painters linked to their family tree had contributed to revolutionizing Norman culture in some way. The awestruck Lucinda told her father that she wanted to contribute to Norman civilization as well. The proud Lawrence went about nurturing her talent by letting her assist him with small projects and giving her blueprints to study. The two of them shared the common goal of wanting to improve the world through their genius and became even closer thanks to the bond they shared. But that common interest would soon end up breaking them apart. Top Secret When Lucinda turned 6, her father started working on a “top secret project” sanctioned by the president of West Concordia himself. He was sworn to secrecy denoting that he couldn’t tell his wife or daughter about the project and he also wasn’t allowed to bring his work home anymore forcing him to spend nights at the Norman Research Institute in Gilt Edge. He was devoting less and less time to his daughter much to their mutual chagrin. Barbie insisted that Lucinda start attending school despite already being well educated since she needed to develop proper social skills and not just tinker with machines all day. Against Lawrence’s wishes, Lucinda was sent to Aurora Elementary School for Juvenile Sorcerers so she could make friends within Pacis. However since this was an all Magus school, her classmates were only interested in magic and didn’t identify with Lucinda’s ambitions at all. They excluded her from games that required magic to play and even mocked her when she would bring blueprints to school. Convinced that they could never understand her aspirations, she became a loner and focused on honing her skills as an inventor opting to disregard her teachers and schoolmates in favor of studying blueprints in dark corners. She continued doing this when it became apparent that Lawrence was working very hard on his own endeavors to the point of staying at the office for days at a time. She followed in his example of putting his craft above social obligations by locking herself in her room and creating small contraptions. Happy Birthday When her 7th birthday came along, Lucinda waited up for her father to come home since he made a Daddy Daughter promise to spend the day with her. She waited for him well into the night despite Barbie beseeching her to give up. She had nodded off only to be woken up by a distraught looking Lawrence. He dodged her concerned questions and handed her a neatly wrapped gift box. He told her that it was actually a present for the inventor she was destined to become. Sensing her confusion, he clarified that she was to open the box 10 years from now on her 17th birthday. This would be their last Daddy Daughter promise as afterwards, Lawrence walked out the door to never be seen again. The Tragedy That same night, the research institute that Lawrence worked at had been burned to the ground by an unidentified arsonist. No bodies were recovered from the wreckage and Lucinda took this as a sign that her father was still alive refusing to believe that he would let himself die before finishing what he started. This alleged terrorist attack led to the country of Concordia being physically segregated. Barbie and Lucinda decided to remain in East Concordia since they had no motivation to move back to the West without Lawrence. Best of Both Worlds Even while living in a magic dependent society Lucinda gave all of her time to science and technology while she put minimal effort into studying her school subjects. She had no interest in learning about magic and she was ostracized by her classmates for her stubborn dedication to inventing. The classmate who most frequently harassed her for this was Clarissa, a magician/idol who is the lead performer of Illuminate; a girl pop group that performs flashy displays of enchantment while singing and dancing. The animosity between the two of them would come to a head once they were paired up to do their final project together. Clarissa boldly told Lucinda that she shouldn’t gripe about how Magus don’t bend a knee to her beliefs while she hasn’t made any genuine effort to understand their values. This statement made Lucinda remember that her father moved them to East Concordia with the intent of furthering his research through the study of magic, which is something that he seemingly never got to do before his disappearance. She started to take an interest in magic and as she studied it, she realized that by combining it with technology she could create inventions unlike anything the world has seen before. Her first magic/tech innovation and their final project ended up being Gidget; the all-purpose device. Sofia; the ruler of Pacis, had come to look over these projects and was so impressed by Gidget that she hired Lucinda as her personal scientist.